Russell Joslin is an musician who has just released his fifth full-length album, titled O Veisalgia. It’s an interesting record, mixing a few different genres together, such as post-punk, electronica, indie rock and grunge. As such, it’s an album that will appeal to a wide variety of listeners, making this one record to not miss out on! Find out more about Russell below!
By Jane Howkins
You recently released a new album, titled O Veisalgia. What can you tell us about the record?
I started the O Veisalgia demos in 2020, around the time my father died – it was during lockdown so I had a lot of time and space to let ideas run, no gigs etc. There were many perspective shifts; the grief, moving to the quieter outskirts of London and my declining interest in pursuing solely acoustic music. I was questioning whether to make a record at all. My fiancée Sarah and I were tired after a few years of touring as a duet in Europe, whilst working full-time back in London. My last album had barely been noticed in the UK and that hurt. One day during the pandemic, Sarah & I were sitting in the garden and she said to me: “I think you need to make an album and get it listened to”. Sounds obvious but for me, that meant it had to be a fuller sound and an audio/visual consideration – with art, videos and music that worked together. It was a big task to do it this way, but it felt like the real work that people do to make albums.
I approached the songs very differently this time, going through the arrangements thoroughly from scratch, writing all the parts myself, instead of getting musicians in to ad-lib over the tracks. In terms of songwriting and production, each track is a different picture. I don’t think there’s an overall ‘sound’ to the songs, they are all different. The cohesive vibe of the record comes from my co-producer/engineer Ed Deegan at Gizzard Recording, he pulled 9 very different songs together masterfully, if you ask me. The excellent musicians I found to play on the record also gave each song its separate identity.
How has the reception to O Veisalgia been so far, and where can the album be purchased?
I can feel that people like the album and are interested in it, that’s nice. Friends and people I know through music can see the work it took to make it, which I appreciate. As ever, it’s been difficult to spread it past the people who already know about what I do, the industry is more saturated and strained than ever, but I gave it a good crack. I’m very grateful to blogs like York Calling for picking up on the record, that helps a lot.
The record is available on LTD edition yellow vinyl, CD, and digital from Bandcamp: https://russelljoslin.bandcamp.com/album/o-veisalgia
Do you plan to release any singles from the record?
I released 3 singles from the record in 2022: Streetfight, Evidence and This is My Home. There may be one or two more singles/videos next year.
Have you started writing for your next full-length release, or is it too early at the moment?
I have plenty of songs for the next record, the question is, do I have the money & energy to record them in 2024? I still need to see how O Veisalgia lands. I need to do some gigs and get in front of people again.
O Veisalgia is a unique sounding record, taking influence from a number of genres. What/who are you most influenced by? What have you been listening to recently?
For the past 4 years or so, I haven’t listened to much music for enjoyment, I’ve been studying it and stealing ideas. There are several references for every song on this album, and then wider influences from literature and film.
Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities had a massive effect on me whilst writing the lyrics for Deep Blood, but then the sound of the song owes debts to neo-psychedelia like The Black Angels and Dead Meadow, plus melodic metal bands like Black Math Horseman. Then you have a trumpet line inspired by Meatraffle. But it all amounts to an attempt at creating a similar atmosphere to one of the meditative, fantastical stories in Calvino’s book, although probably more apocalyptic.
When making the Evidence video, I was watching and re-watching John Rogers and Nick Papadimitriou’s excellent film The London Perambulator. I became obsessed with the edge-lands of Walthamstow and Epping Forest. Finding dated, run-down underpasses, Victorian waterworks, oddly straight B-roads and filming the sunset as it hits a concrete bridge or noticing gulls incongruously flocking around a tower block. It’s only had a few hundred hits, but that song and video match each other exactly as I saw them in my head.
For the cover, I wanted to involve a ‘liminal space’ somehow. Hopefully, it’s not just nocturnal photography, but an image of something atmospheric and evocative that would not normally be noticed. I’ve been fascinated by petrol stations at night since I was a kid; the creeping unease they inspire when nobody is about, how vulnerable and exposed they can look, lit up against the vast blackness. And according to the internet, I’m not the only one who loves looking at this stuff.
There are musical influences on me vocally – guitar sound influences, drum sound influences and references for Sarah and I’s vocal duets. In late 2019, just before I started the demos, we travelled to Australia, where Sarah is from, and I was listening to early psychedelia like The 13th Floor Elevators and Love, plus other 60s stuff like the Sonics, The Byrds, Shocking Blue, Scott Walker. When I moved into arranging the demos, recent Tom Waits songs were helping a lot – his ability to make a relentless, cacophonous track remain interesting and forward-moving. Once the aesthetic of the album was defined and the early singles were being mixed, I started moving towards The Fall, The Chameleons, The Sound, Bauhaus, Depeche Mode, also newer artists like Chelsea Wolfe and John Murry. I needed to find bands who made massive efforts to make a ‘sound’ – it’s quite common for a songwriter to just stick a band behind a song they’ve written and think they’re done, there are whole worlds to explore beyond that.
You used to create folk music, which you’ve moved away from in recent years. What prompted the change?
I think it’s debatable whether I’ve ever been a folk artist at all. I’m definitely a songwriter influenced by folk music, and those elements are present even in this new record, despite the rock aesthetic. Like punk, folk music can express itself through content and ethos, regardless of the superficial sound.
Folk scenes are more and more important these days as places to preserve old songs and music, to continue the passing down of stories through generations. If you are obsessed with writing your own material and expressing your own perspective, you’re a songwriter, and you rightly may never find a place in folk scenes.
For a while, I tried to shoehorn myself into the UK folk scene as some kind of ‘new angle’. It’s not what they want, and I applaud them for it. I give a small amount of my energy to learning old songs, but I do it largely for myself – if I fall in love with a song, so I don’t fit in there. Me and Sarah still get the odd folk gig and it’s always great to get involved, but the power of an old song being reproduced in the modern era is a different thing altogether. Having said that, I have been enjoying playing The Sheepstealers in recent years. I love that song.
After years of playing gigs with the acoustic guitar, my hands were tired. I was gravitating towards the electric again, then the inevitable sonic experimentation started, with pedals and effects. I remember beginning the Streetfight riff – using delay to make a sound like the helicopters that flew over our house in Haringey each night, and suddenly I heard drum machines, synths and saw London at night. But as a songwriter, I’m still influenced by great folk music and the original songs of people like Dick Gaughan.
You’re based in Greater London. What is the local music scene like in your area?
There are many different scenes in London, mostly focused around areas and venues. In 2019, Sarah & I started a night of our own at The Empire Bar in Hackney, but the pandemic took care of that venue. In the last 5-10 years I’ve felt the greatest affinity with the songwriter scene around The Betsey Trotwood and The Lantern Society – people obsessed with the creation and sharing of original songs. Of all the places I’ve played around the world, it’s the place I feel the most nervous playing new material – you will feel it if you lie on stage there. It’s a great place to test whether a new song is worth taking forward or not. For me, that scene is about taking risks with your own emotions and, to a certain extent, your technical ability in singing and guitar playing. It can be intimidating, but then if you’re being honest, the community is very supportive.
Do you have anything else exciting coming up in the next few months?
I’m starting to plan next year and how best to sell the vinyl I’ve made. I would love to be back in the studio soon, but I can’t do it financially at the moment. There will be some travelling to countries me and Sarah have toured before, it will be great to return and see some of the friends we made after so long. I also want to make more inroads in this country. I turned my focus to the continent a long time ago and I’d like to play more in the UK.
I also want to start writing and playing music again – during the last few months of preparing the album, I’ve felt like a graphic designer and social media manager.
Do you have any tour dates lined up for the UK?
They’re on the way.
Any last words for the fans?
Reach out! It would be great to meet you. A songwriter’s world can be lonely, that’s how it’s always been and how it must be, but the current digital landscape makes it worse in troubling ways. We are now obsessed with our online metrics; play counts and follower engagement. We’re overworked producing ‘content’ for likes, rather than using our energy to make music. Therefore, the smallest real connection makes the biggest difference. Musicians are supporting each other more than ever these days, which is great, but we don’t just want to hang around with each other. Come to a gig if a band you like is breaking themselves to put one on, buy a record, leave a comment or send a message telling the artist how you feel about a song or album you’ve been listening to – there’s a good chance you could become friends ‘IRL’.